Through The Great Southwest

Toad to Nowhere

★ 10

Two filmmakers journey to Arizona's Sonoran Desert to find bufo alvarus, a psychedelic toad. TOAD TO NOWHERE is a documentary about healing, hallucinogens, and looking within to explore the unknown.

I'll Push You

2017 · ★ 7

I'll Push You is about two lifelong friends, one quadriplegic, who embark on the pilgrimage of the Santiago de Compostela. It's a documentary about friendship and the grittiness of love and sacrifice.

Love Exiled

2010 · ★ 5.6

On November 4th, 2008, three states - California, Florida and Arizona - voted to amend their constitutions, denying and revoking the rights of same-sex couples to marry. On May 26, 2009, with Canadian allies, gay American families rally at a Vancouver demonstration to protest these amendments that persecute the LGBTQ community. Demonstration organizer Roger Chin relays the California Supreme Court's infamous decision on Prop 8. Subsequent speakers talk about couples living in exile. Weaving elements of public protest and intimate interviews, four families share their stories of how they met, their decision to escape to freedom in Canada, their Canadian experience and their dreams of returning to their home country, family and friends. In the end, the organizer celebrates the freedoms to marry that exists in Canada.

The State of Arizona

2014

From PBS: Arizona's enforcement-led policy, which grew out of its unique position as a frontline border state, is reshaping the national conversation around immigration reform. With dozens of states considering a similar approach, THE STATE OF ARIZONA holds up a mirror, asking Americans who they are, and who they want to be.

Iceland Divide

A solo bikepacking adventure across Iceland.

Broken Rainbow

1985 · ★ 5.8

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

The Four Corners: A National Sacrifice Area?

1983

Documents the cultural and ecological impacts of coal stripmining, uranium mining, and oil shale development in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona – homeland of the Hopi and Navajo.

Great natural monuments - Grand Canyon

2025 · ★ 8

The Grand Canyon is a breathtaking natural monument. It's one of the planet’s best-known landscapes, yet we often forget that it tells two billion years of the Earth's history. Geologists Karl Karlström and Laurie Crossey are the leading experts on this. Over the course of 8 days, they descend the Colorado river and tackle hundreds of rapids to unveil the mysteries held in the Grand Canyon, and the place that humans occupy within it.

Cartel Land

2015 · ★ 7.2

In the Mexican state of Michoacán, Dr. Jose Mireles, a small-town physician known as "El Doctor," shepherds a citizen uprising against the Knights Templar, the violent drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. Meanwhile, in Arizona's Altar Valley—a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley—Tim "Nailer" Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to halt Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across our border.

Desert Dreams

2013 · ★ 7

With neither narration nor people, DESERT DREAMS dispels the notion that deserts are uninspiring and "deserted." This cinematic experience will immerse you in an unexpected world filled with life and beauty year-round--in Dry Summer, Wet Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. Four years in the making and created by a filmmaker intimately acquainted with the Sonoran Desert, this multi-media production showcases 182 species of plants and animals. The sound track combines natural sounds with a kaleidoscope of flute and percussion vignettes.

High Rollers

2020

Watching High Rollers – The Golden Age of Arizona Skateboarding is like finding a lost artifact that helps complete a larger mystery from the past. In this case High Rollers adds a much needed layer of knowledge to the origins of radical vertical, and over-vertical, skateboarding. The skateboard boom of the 1970’s went from “sidewalk surfing” and driveway antics to aerials out of backyard swimming pools in an astonishingly short span of time. This evolutionary leap was for the most part well documented in the pages of Skateboarder Magazine and the 2001 documentary Dogtown and Z-Boyz. However, the field of vision both of these forms of media is narrow (although both are excellent), they both deal almost exclusively with what was happening in California (with occasional nods to Florida). It is understandable as skateboarding was born and given life in California, but what happened next? What was going on elsewhere?

Edward Abbey, naturellement subversif !

2025 · ★ 7

A resistance writer and pioneer of nature writing with a controversial personality, Edward Abbey wrote more than twenty books on the theme of eternal nature. A gem of counterculture, his 1975 novel The Monkey Wrench Gang inspired a generation of environmental activists and readers with rebellious souls. Portrait of a rebellious, lyrical, and rude writer.